John T. Cacioppo is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago.[1] He founded and is Director of the University of Chicago Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and the Director of the Arete Initiative of the Office of the Vice President for Research and National Laboratories at the University of Chicago.[1] He is a member of the Department of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, and the College and one of the founders of the field of social neuroscience.

He has received the Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences, the Distinguished Scientific Award for an early career Contribution to Psychophysiology, an honorary Doctor of Sciencedegree from Bard College, the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychophysiology from the Society for Psychophysiological Research, the Donald Campbell Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Patricia Barchas Award from the American Psychosomatic Society, the Award for Distinguished Service on Behalf of Personality and Social Psychology from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology, the Theoretical Innovation Prize from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association, the Order of the Sons of Italy Award, the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Ohio State University Department of Psychology, and the Scientific Impact Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. He has been the keynote speaker at various meetings including the Festival della Scienza in Genoa, Italy and the Annual Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science.[1] He also serves on various Boards.

In the late 1970s, Cacioppo collaborated with Richard Petty to develop the elaboration likelihood model of attitudes and persuasion and began investigations of individual differences in cognitive motivation. They also examined the social and biological influences on mind and behavior. A decade later, Cacioppo began working with Gary Berntson to pioneer a new field they called Social neuroscience.[2] This led to an expansion of Cacioppo’s research examining how personal relationships get under the skin to affect Social cognition and emotions, personality processes, biology, and health. By employing brain scans, monitoring of autonomic and neuroendocrine processes, and assays of immune function, he found the overpowering influence of social context — a factor so strong that it can alter genetic expression in white blood cells. The work further showed how the subjective sense of social isolation (loneliness) uniquely disrupts our perceptions, behavior, and physiology, becoming a trap that not only reinforces isolation, but can lead to early death. In 2004, he and William Patrick began a collaboration that led to their book, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, which makes the case that social cooperation is, in fact, humanity’s defining characteristic. Cacioppo, together with Louise Hawkley, Jean Decety, Howard Nusbaum, and Gary Berntson, continue to investigate the biological mechanisms involved in social perception, interpersonal processes, cognition, emotion, and behavior.
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Social neuroscience

Social neuroscience is the new discipline that examines the associations between social and neural levels of organizations and the biological mechanisms underlying these associations. Neuroscientists have tended to focus on single organisms, organs, cells, or intracellular processes. Social species create emergent organizations beyond the individual, however, and these emergent structures evolved hand in hand with neural and hormonal mechanisms to support them because the consequent social behaviors helped animals survive, reproduce, and care for offspring sufficiently long that they too reproduced. Social neuroscience, therefore, is concerned with how biological systems implement social processes and behavior, capitalizing on concepts and methods from the neuroscience to inform and refine theories of social psychological processes, and using social and behavioral concepts and data to inform and refine theories of neural organization and function[6]
John Cacioppo and Gary Berntson are the founding fathers of social neuroscience.[7][8]

More than 20 years ago, John began working with Gary Berntson of The Ohio State University to pioneer a new field they called “social neuroscience.” This is an interdisciplinary attempt to trace how social forces “get under the skin” to affect physiology, as well as how physiology influences social interactions. John’s recent research on loneliness, conducted in collaboration with Louise Hawkley, Ron Thisted, and Linda Waite, has raised questions about one of the pillars of modern medicine and psychology—the focus on the individual as the broadest appropriate unit of inquiry.
By employing brain scans, monitoring of autonomic and neuroendocrine processes, and assays of immune function, John and his colleagues have found that the influence of social context is so strong that it can alter genetic expression in white blood cells. This research also showed how the subjective sense of social isolation (“loneliness”) uniquely disrupts our perceptions, behavior, and physiology, becoming a trap that not only reinforces isolation, but can lead to early death.